Thank you, Patrice and Helen, for your comments - I hope they will continue and others will choose to contribute.

I am very much attracted to and in agreement with what you two have written.

It is perspective enlarging to have access to the “lived experiences of the Other,” as Patrice writes.

Equally informative is Helen’s decrying the use of shaming and how such approaches induce defenses and stifle communication.

Privilege and power are troublesome and, in general, our species has a difficult time containing their effects.

Certainly, they are central to behavioral dysfunctions, as the British so clearly enunciate in their Power/Threat/Meaning construct.  (see attachment)

While it is unhelpful to use labels argumentatively, naming does help to identify problems.

That in mind, I’d like to share a couple of observations:

My experience is that there are some males who also adversely affected by this worldview.

I am but one of those males and I chafe under the “macho-male” expectations and demands (pardon the “ism” - I search for a more appropriate moniker but have yet to find one).

That is an unusually discomfiting experience.

On the one hand I benefit by being a white male, on the other hand I rebel (ineffectively) against the group which enable my privileges!

Cognitive dissonance, anyone?

These thoughts are not meant to minimize or discount the experience of women.

Rather, they are meant to illustrate that the conflicts produced this unwelcome worldview are not solely a gender-related matter.

There are some men who are heartened by being able to hear and read the comments from Patrice and Helen, and who agree with them.

And, I’d really like to know the comments of Patrice, Helen, and other women to my observations - as well as those from men, I might add!

Best regards,

Waldemar